About Sprawl

25377 Views 321 Replies 43 Participants Last post by trainrover, Apr 29, 2011

dleung

Discussion Starter · May 10, 2008 (Edited)

Is the green belt working?

Just a stub to spur discussion...still working on it, more images to come...
First thing I notice is that the greenbelt is thickest where the GTA is least likely to expand and thinnest where sprawl has already jumped past its boundaries. Plus it looks like they will allow Toronto's land area to grow by another 10% based on the amount of white space between the grey area and the greenbelt, so they can gow to 6 million, (just by perpetuating the current mixture of condos downtown and cookie cutter houses at the periphery), before needing to get serious about densification.

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vid

· #2 · May 11, 2008

Make sure you examine Ottawa. They have a pretty good example of what happens when you mix green belts and the demand for single family dwellings.

CrazyCanuck

· #3 · May 11, 2008

I'm going to go with failing. If you live in the east suburbs like I do Pickering, Ajax, Whiby and Oshawa you'll notice no sign of changing to increased density, just more of the same.

UofT

· #4 · May 11, 2008

CrazyCanuck said:
I'm going to go with failing. If you live in the east suburbs like I do Pickering, Ajax, Whiby and Oshawa you'll notice no sign of changing to increased density, just more of the same.

Yah but areas between Whitby and Ajax still have a lot of land sold to contractors for more sprawl development.

urbanfan89

· #5 · May 11, 2008

I doubt more layers of sprawl will be economically justifiable once the price of fuel continues to rise exponentially.

By then any greenbelt would become redundant.

Taller Better

· #6 · May 11, 2008

I am not sure if the greenbelt concept will solve all the problems, but I think the biggest
indicator that it is working is the current downtown condo boom in Toronto. Suburban condo builders who would normally be building out in the sticks are erecting condos downtown. What are some of the other greenbelt legislations across the country? Have they been successful in slowing down the sprawl?

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urbanfan89

· #7 · May 11, 2008

http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/growth/lrsp/LRSP.pdf

Page 28 indicates the areas where sprawl is limited. The urbanized area has barely changed in the past 30 years, but for some reason golf courses are allowed to be designated as agricultural land.

canadave87

· #8 · May 11, 2008

vid said:
Make sure you examine Ottawa. They have a pretty good example of what happens when you mix green belts and the demand for single family dwellings.

Yeah, the greenbelt in Ottawa makes the environment worse, if anything, thanks to how much is lengthens commutes.

vid

· #9 · May 11, 2008

In Thunder Bay, we have a 12 screen cinema and sports centre on a plot of land zoned for agricultural use. What makes that even more embarrassing, is that Thunder Bay doesn't tax agricultural land. :no:

The closest thing we have to a greenbelt is the large park between the city and Current River. It's more like Rouge Park than a green belt though.

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malek

· #10 · May 11, 2008

urbanfan89 said:
I doubt more layers of sprawl will be economically justifiable once the price of fuel continues to rise exponentially.

thats only temporary.

inflation will catch up with the price of fuel and/or speculation will have to end at some point with oil.

plus no oil doesn't mean no cars... they'll use some other form of energy.

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urbanfan89

· #11 · May 11, 2008

malek said:
thats only temporary.

inflation will catch up with the price of fuel and/or speculation will have to end at some point with oil.

Not when global oil demand keeps rising when oil production cannot keep pace.

plus no oil doesn't mean no cars... they'll use some other form of energy.

We won't run out of oil. We'll run out of cheap and plentiful oil. Even if all cars run on clean fuels, then the price of food, drugs, clothing, manufactured goods, and electricity will all soar, and all of us will spend a larger % of our incomes on the bare necessities. The first casualties will be the greenfield developers, who will have to retool themselves or die.

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malek

· #12 · May 11, 2008

urbanfan89 said:
Not when global oil demand keeps rising when oil production cannot keep pace.

We won't run out of oil. We'll run out of cheap and plentiful oil. Even if all cars run on clean fuels, then the price of food, drugs, clothing, manufactured goods, and electricity will all soar, and all of us will spend a larger % of our incomes on the bare necessities. The first casualties will be the greenfield developers, who will have to retool themselves or die.

High Oil prices will make it so that demand will be tammed, saying that it will grow even with exploding prices is absurd, defies all economic theories. Alternatives aren't built overnight, not everyone will have a hybrid car tomorow morning, but with time, most people will consider them and get them.

We already been through a peak price for oil in the 70s, yes everything was more expensive in the short term, but with time inflation catches up and make the "higher" prices more reasonnable, these things don't happen overnight. It takes 3-5 years for things to settle down.

Trust me, the real losers won't be the people in the western countries, but the poorer countries that won't be able to afford oil at all. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

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urbanfan89

· #13 · May 11, 2008

malek said:
High Oil prices will make it so that demand will be tammed, saying that it will grow even with exploding prices is absurd, defies all economic theories. Alternatives aren't built overnight, not everyone will have a hybrid car tomorow morning, but with time, most people will consider them and get them.

What about the other necessities that require crude oil? Food, drugs, clothes, electricity, and medicine all require oil to produce. Fertilizer requires oil to produce. Soaring fertilizer prices will mean soaring food prices, and ripple everywhere in the economy.

We already been through a peak price for oil in the 70s, yes everything was more expensive in the short term, but with time inflation catches up and make the "higher" prices more reasonnable, these things don't happen overnight. It takes 3-5 years for things to settle down.

Back then the shortage was due to the Arab embargo. The shortage was artificial, and there was a huge glut of oil in the 1980s and 1990s. Prices actually went down.

This time the oil supply cannot be increased at all. Countries that were oil exporters are now importers (e.g. Britain, Indonesia, Bahrain, Mexico and Iran in 10 years, etc). Russia is seeing a decrease in oil production. Thus the shortage will be permanent. So prices will only continue going up, up, and away.

Cheap oil is over.

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dleung

Discussion Starter · #14 · May 11, 2008

Gah, it shouldn't be peak oil but good urban planning policy that is reshaping our cities. If people are living in tree-less cookie cutter houses with no room for even a hedge between you and your neighbour, what's the point of living in a suburb... Why can't people be proactive for once??

canadave87

· #15 · May 12, 2008

Here's a map I put together of the green belt versus sprawl in Ottawa:

Legend

Purple: Contiguous urban core
Green: Greenbelt (Approximate borders)
Grey: Macdonald-Cartier International Airport
Red: Current sprawl
Yellow: Areas in danger of future sprawl (mostly my personal opinion)

-----------------------------------------------

As you can probably see, development leapfrogs the greenbelt in several different spaces, and has tons of room to expand, especially compared to the nearly-full city core. There are any number of currently open areas that will likely be swallowed as suburbs start merging, such as in Orleans with Cumberland and Navan, Barrhaven with Manotick and Kanata with Stittsville.

Even the greenbelt isn't that green, containing highways in four different places, numerous small pockets of development and even Ottawa's airport!

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dleung

Discussion Starter · #16 · Sep 12, 2008

Ouch... looks like the greenbelt will have a hard time reining in future sprawl, that's for sure.

A few sniplets about Vancouver's ecodensity from the main pdf:
http://www.busbyperkinswill.ca/media...tyBrochure.pdf

I really like this node thing:

The graph seems a bit suspect... we don't have energy-consuming commie blocks, and people drive for shorter distances (compared to North America), but to be better than London??? The same pdf also mentioned that Vancouver's density will take 50 years to barely match London's current density!

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vancouverite/to'er

· #17 · Sep 12, 2008

I think they're using the GTA in that graph. Sooo typical. Unless they're counting heating/air conditioning for all the cities which might make sense.

Taller Better

· #18 · Sep 12, 2008 (Edited)

dleung said:
we don't have energy-consuming commie blocks, !

You mean they use less energy because of the milder climate?

Plumber73

· #19 · Sep 12, 2008

I've always been confused by that term ("commie block"). Seems a lot of people use it loosely, like any building they don't like is a "commie block".

dleung

Discussion Starter · #20 · Sep 12, 2008

Taller said:
You mean they use less energy because of the milder climate?

I mean we have very few inefficient slabs from the 60's (architecturally-speaking, most of our older apartments are point towers, not that it changes anything). Plus I can think of plenty of cities in North America with milder climates than Vancouver.

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